Victoria’s offspring brought the world disasters
SIR – Daisy Goodwin (Features, August 24) says that Queen Victoria was the first woman to have it all: big job, hunky husband, nine children and no guilt.
Her progeny, including the Kaiser and King George V (whose cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, married a grand-daughter of Victoria), made decisions that led to the biggest disasters of the 20th century.
Without them there might have been no First World War, no Russian Revolution, no Treaty of Versailles. These in turn led to Hitler and the Second World War.
A hundred million lives might have been spared if it hadn’t been for Victoria’s obsession with reproduction and then making sure her offspring were married into the ruling houses of Europe.
“As Queen, wife and mother, she set the stage for the emancipation of her female subjects,” says Daisy Goodwin. Perhaps it might have been better if she spent more time with them in the nursery bringing them up as civilised human beings.
Often thought a prude, Victoria was sex-crazed. She didn’t care for bearing or rearing children. She thought them ugly and stupid and beat them. If she had had a better attitude, the world might have been saved a lot of pain.
James Hughes-onslow
London SE5